Ted Kennedy, Feminist Icon?

Until Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer in the spring of 2008, the conventional wisdom, even among some Democrats, especially middle-aged women, was that he was a relic of the past [2], more of a historical monument than a guiding light to the future. "Pompous windbag" was how one friend from Massachusetts, who supported Hillary Clinton for president, described him to me shortly after Teddy endorsed Barack Obama. "I don't like how he treats women," said another, not surprised by his betrayal of Hillary. They both pointed with pride to the overwhelming victory Massachusetts gave Hillary in the Democratic primary. Teddy’s endorsement of Barack had almost no impact in his home state.

But the brain cancer diagnosis in May 2008 elicited a wave of sympathy. Last Lion [3], a book produced by the staff of the Boston Globe earlier this year, showed how [4] Teddy grew from a notorious roué to a stable family man, a genuine advocate for feminist causes, and a man faithful to his wife Vicki, with whom he seems to have achieved a solid partnership. And in Kennedy’s best-selling memoir, True Compass [5], he even comes across as emotionally intelligent—a quality the Kennedy men have never been noted for. If he became the best of the Kennedy brothers, that’s because he became a feminist.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, a slew of books and magazine articles pretty well demolished the Camelot myth, portraying the intensely competitive, highly intelligent, and overachieving Kennedy family as devastatingly lacking in emotional intelligence. The tragic deaths of so many Kennedy men—Joe Jr., John, Robert, Robert's sons David and Michael, and John F. Kennedy Jr.—were portrayed as resulting not from a series of tragic accidents, but from hubris and recklessness. The Kennedy males knew, or should have known, the risks to their lives from dangerous airplanes, potential assassins, drugs, alcohol, and hijinks on ski slopes. They were just too eager to demonstrate heroics, too emotionally stupid and imprudent to save their own skins.

Researchers documented the three-generation-long Kennedy male pattern of treating women as objects, conquests, sources of physical pleasure, but certainly not as emotional equals. To add insult to sexist injury, Ted's two-decade marriage to Joan Bennett (like nephew Joe's 12-year marriage to Sheila Rauch) was annulled so that the men would no longer be seen as divorced in the eyes of the Catholic Church and would be eligible to take communion.

Ted’s feminist epiphany came in 1991, when he was 59 years old. He was late, yes, but then some men of his generation never learned at all, right? On Good Friday of that year, unable to sleep because of sad and painful memories of his deceased family members, he roused his son Patrick and nephew William Kennedy Smith and suggested they go bar-hopping in Palm Beach. As Ted writes in True Compass, “Keep moving to keep the darkness away.” Smith met a young woman who, to Teddy’s utter embarrassment, charged the nephew with rape, and the story became a disaster.

I remember watching Kennedy speak at an American Psychiatric Association convention in 1991, shortly after the rape accusations against his nephew broke into the news. He came to speak about health care legislation before Congress, but he opened his speech by quipping that “I’m here because everyone says I need to get my head examined.”

That fall, Kennedy sat in silence as Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas, nominated by the first President Bush for the Supreme Court, of sexual harassment. Ted’s political allies were furious that his private life made it impossible for him to speak with any moral authority about matters of sexual equality. He faced a clear choice: He could continue his promiscuous behavior and become a political dinosaur. Or he could do what the times demanded: Change his attitude and behavior toward women, and risk the intimacy that comes from commitment to one person in an equal partnership.

In June 1991, Teddy was invited to a dinner party, and, he wrote, “found myself looking into the beautiful hazel eyes of Victoria Reggie.” With his reputation in tatters, he might have viewed Reggie, a family friend, as a port in a storm. But an accomplished lawyer in her own right, Vicki wasn’t about to be used as a political prop. “What’s wrong? Couldn’t get a date?” she teased him. When he asked her out for dinner the next night, she agreed. But then she had doubts. “Did I just say yes? Have I lost my mind?”

The last section of True Compass is called “Renewal.” It describes Ted and Vicki’s romance. She was not awed and intimidated by Teddy or the other Kennedys. She entered the marriage with open eyes. Her father, one of Teddy’s best friends, joked to her that she would come fourth in his list of priorities, after the Senate, his boat, and his dogs.

Vicki developed into a full political partner in Teddy’s quest for political survival in 1994, challenging the job-creation claims [6] of his opponent, Mitt Romney. She good-naturedly listened to voters who bluntly told her she was “not as pretty as the first Mrs. Kennedy.” “Vicki loved that story and used it to tease me to no end about the sacrifices she made for me,” Ted writes in True Compass.

Ted may owe to Vicki in more ways than one the emotional intelligence that permeates True Compass. It seems clear that she had a role in editing the book, in packaging the official Kennedy story for posterity. Where Teddy might have let his memoir bog down in discussions of policy or legislative history, I suspect she helped steer it toward reflections on his emotions and his most important relationships. (From the 1,000 pages of notes and journal entries that Kennedy kept over his 49-year career, I bet there is at least one more wonky book to come.)

Marriage counselors say that, at best, we receive in our marriages what we failed to receive from our parents. Teddy, whose father told him he should never cry, deny pain, or quit, developed his emotional intelligence in a way that his brothers never got a chance to develop because of his partnership with Vicki. He learned that it was not a sign of weakness to remain faithful to one woman. And that it was OK to cry, to acknowledge pain, and sometimes, even, to let go.